Project would extract 5M tons of rock each year

By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

March 02, 2014

SAN ANDREAS – Ranchers and other neighbors opposed to the proposed Newman Ridge quarry and a related asphalt plant near Ione won a legal victory last month.

Amador Superior Court Judge J.S. Hermanson ruled that Amador County officials failed to accurately reveal the likely traffic impacts of the Newman Ridge quarry before environmental documents were approved for the project in 2012.

“I’m delighted by the judge’s decision,” said Sondra West-Moore, whose 95-year-old father, Fraser West, lives on the family ranch next to the proposed quarry site. “I think the judge really nailed it when he talked about the misinformation. It was impossible for the public to understand what was going to happen to them.”

It is doubtful, however, that the ruling will stop the project, which is the ultimate goal of the Ione Valley Land, Air, and Water Defense Alliance, the group that filed the suit.

“Of course, we are going to proceed,” said William Bunce, managing partner for Newman Minerals.

The ruling means that before proceeding, Amador County planners will have to redo their reports on traffic impacts, give the public a chance to comment on those impacts and then re-approve the project’s environmental impact report.

That is actually a fairly small task compared to what project opponents had been seeking. Critics of the project had also argued that studies of impacts to air, water, habitat and noise were inadequate, but the judge did not rule in favor on those points.

“My expectation is that we will comply with the court’s order and redraft the traffic chapter and recirculate it for comments and bring it back to the board,” Amador County Counsel Gregory Gillott said.

The board, in this case, is the Amador County Board of Supervisors, which approved the environmental documents and the project in 2012. Amador County leaders were enthusiastic about the proposed quarry in part because it promises to bring jobs to the area.

Newman Minerals already employs 20 people at an operation in the county. The proposed Newman Ridge projects would expand that work force to 60, Bunce said in an email.

The proposed Newman Ridge quarry would extract an estimated 5 million tons of rock per year over a period of 50 years. Some of that rock would be used to produce aggregate, concrete and other products at the Edwin Center industrial site nearby on Highway 104.

The 278-acre quarry and the 113-acre industrial plant site are part of a 16,100-acre portion of the Howard Ranch purchased in 2006 by investors including Farallon Capital Management of San Francisco, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. (Charles Howard, the auto sales tycoon who formerly owned the ranch, was famed as the owner of the racehorse Seabiscuit.)

West-Moore said she and other neighbors opposed to the project plan to remain active and to ask county officials to do far more than just recalculate traffic studies.

She said they will ask county officials to reopen consideration of water impacts, in particular, since other projects recently approved nearby, such as an expansion of Mule Creek State Prison, will also tap that resource. She also noted that California is in a drought.

She said that project opponents will urge county leaders to consider alternatives to the Newman Ridge quarry and asphalt plant, such as conserving the land for ranching and recreational hiking.

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Follow him at www.recordnet.com/calaverasblog and on Twitter @DanaReports.